They're a band of two halves - the first two (PaganIcons, Surviving You Always) are arty hardcore, the latter with a different and jazzier rhythm section. It's my favourite. The later ones (Worldbroken, We Became Snakes) are more jazz fusion style, the former being an improv live album. Still good (and a precursor to Universal Congress Of) but a different beast.

Saccharine Trust's "Surviving You Always" is the great lost SST record, lost becuz as noted above it never was issued on cd and the label let it go out of print. The smartest decision I ever made was when I bought the whole ST collection sight-unheard in one fell swoope from my local record store. If you can find it, listen to this one first.

They are probably my favorite SST band and that's saying something. I love all four (and the live reocrd) for different reasons. Still at too, the album from 2001, "The Great One is Dead" is awesome and equally the level of their other records.

Just looked at the SST website to see what vinyl they're selling and both Negativland SST albums are still in print. Are they big sellers or something? Slightly surprised me because most of the rest of the stuff was Black Flag, Huskers, firehose, Minutemen, Saint Vitus, Soundgarden etc and not much of the quirky less well-known stuff.

Listening to fIREHOSE for the first time in a million years. I got a bit fed up with their albums somewhere along the way, but Ragin' Full On is so good. Obviously they were always going to be underpowered in comparison to D Boon's stun guitar attack, but there's so many moments where everything meshes so beautifully that, in the context of this record at least, I couldn't really give a hoot.